


fact, fiction, and the fine line in between

by mfalfanclub



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Anniversary, Best Friends, Everyone Thinks They're Together, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Pining, and a bit dumb, and also mischievous, and they might as well be, drinking games sort of, himbo yuta maybe, the home of phobia is mentioned v briefly, they're just very soft boys, yuta and ten are dancers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25525426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mfalfanclub/pseuds/mfalfanclub
Summary: When Ten first joined the Seventh Sense, Yuta just wanted to be closer to him. Now, a year later, they are closer, almost as close as they can be. Yuta figures that almost is going to have to be enough.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54
Collections: the eyes are the window to the soul





	fact, fiction, and the fine line in between

Yuta wasn’t sure how he and Ten had become best friends. He certainly hadn’t intended for things to turn out like this. Not that he didn’t love being friends with Ten—they were two peas in a pod, two birds of a feather, two matching puzzle pieces. Having Ten this close to him was basically a gift from whatever gods existed. Aside from being so very, wholly, comfortably, uncomfortably platonic, it was perfect.

He wasn’t Ten’s only best friend, of course. That was just the term he’d applied to their relationship in his head, because “friends” wasn’t enough and anything else was too much. Ten had Johnny, whom he’d known as a teenager in the United States, and Lalisa back in Thailand. They’d both known him longer than Yuta had. But they didn’t see him almost every day like Yuta did, and they weren’t always at his side like Yuta was.

“I don’t know. I mean, I told them I’d go,” said Ten, pushing a clump of rice around his plate with his chopsticks. “They were just, like, right there while I was packing up, and I couldn’t say no.”

“Yeah, no,” said Yuta, “you could say no. Just say you don’t feel good this week or something.”

“Yeah, but I’ve told them that like four times before. Can I have some of your noodles?”

Yuta pushed his bowl across the table to him. “I mean, do you want to go to the party?”

“Not really. Not if you don’t go. But I don’t want them to think I don’t want to hang out with them...”

“But you _don’t_ want to hang out with them.”

Ten lowered the dangling noodles into his mouth. He’d scooped up Yuta’s last fish cake. That was okay—Ten loved fish cakes. “I know. But they don’t have to know that.”

“For someone who stakes their brand on being a bitch,” said Yuta, “you’re a little too fucking nice.”

Ten took another noodle. “Can you come?”

Yuta didn’t want to go to a party with their dance team’s loud, conceited, and painfully heterosexual choreographer any more than Ten did. “Okay,” he said.

Ten let out a grateful whoop. “You are heaven sent.”

“Anything for you,” said Yuta. His tone wasn’t casual. Ten didn’t notice, as always.

When Ten had first joined the Seventh Sense, Yuta had been dancing with them for two years already. Ten was new to Seoul, and the only person he knew in Korea was Johnny. One of the team’s senior members, Yixing, had just gone home to China. Yuta remembered being skeptical that Yixing’s replacement could even come close to filling his shoes. Then Ten came.

He first saw him in the locker room while they were getting ready for practice. It was summer, and he’d worn flip-flops from class to the studio. Halfway through changing, he realized he’d forgotten socks.

“Marklee, you got extra socks?”

Mark had shaken his head.

“Xuxi?”

“You want my nasty ones from yesterday?”

Mark crumpled his nose and said, “Ew, why do you still have those in your locker?”

“Maybe I was in a rush yesterday, Marcos,” Xuxi said while Yuta went to ask up and down the aisle for socks. No one seemed to have any. This never happened. Someone always had socks. Yuta was starting to fear that he’d have to take Xuxi up on his offer when he came around the next corner and found Taeyong talking to a wiry, bright-eyed boy sitting on a bench.

“Then we can introduce you,” Taeyong was saying. They both looked up at Yuta. The boy was already smiling, and his smile expanded when he saw Yuta. It was a wide, square smile, a little nervous-looking and sugar-sweet.

“Hi! You must be Ten!” said Yuta.

Ten’s eyes darted up and down him within half a second and he said, “Yeah!”

“I’m Yuta!” Yuta had left his shirt with his stuff. He felt self-conscious suddenly.

“Nice to meet you!”

“Yeah, you too! Welcome to TSS, we’ve been really excited to meet you,” said Yuta.

Ten nodded, still smiling forcefully. Yuta swung a little towards Taeyong, arms crossed over his chest. “Hey, do you have any extra socks on you?”

“No, sorry,” said Taeyong.

“Ahhh,” said Yuta.

“Oh, uh,” said Ten, reaching for his bag, “I might have some.”

“Oh my god, really?” said Yuta as Ten pulled things out of his bag and tossed them on the floor.

“Yeah, I think s…yep. Here,” said Ten, handing a bundled-up pair of bright purple socks to Yuta.

“You just saved my life,” Yuta said. Offhand he added to Taeyong, “I like this guy already.”

Taeyong laughed and Ten said, “I like it here already,” and Yuta bowed a little and went back to his stuff. Mark and Xuxi had already gone out to the studio. Yuta pulled on his shirt and then the purple socks. Why had he been so awkward? He wished he hadn’t been so awkward. He replayed the conversation in his head while he tied his shoes. He couldn’t tell if it had been as bad as it seemed. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. He couldn’t tell.

He realized a few weeks later, when his schoolkid crush on Ten was at its peak, that he hadn’t agonized word-by-word over such small interactions since high school. It also occurred to him that he’d never felt self-conscious walking around the studio shirtless before Ten came. He hadn’t really felt self-conscious about being shirtless ever.

Maybe it was because of the self-consciousness that sprang up whenever Ten was around that Yuta could never quite manage to properly flirt with him. He thought, for a little while, he was doing a decent job of it—of letting Ten know how he felt about him without coming on too strong. That same day, for example, Ten’s first day, Yuta had placed himself beside Ten through every exercise and practice session, helped him through the steps, showered him with unrestrained and sincere praise. “You learn way faster than I do,” said Yuta during a water break. It was true, but Ten said after lowering his water bottle from his pretty lips, “Uh huh. You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m serious,” said Yuta, “you’re awesome,” and Mark, who was standing with them, said, “He’s not kidding, he takes three or four sessions to learn a routine.”

Yuta cut Mark a look, but Mark didn’t notice. Ten only said, in his pretty tinkling-bells voice, “I’ll have to see it to believe it.”

And Yuta thought he was flirting, or at least flirting enough, over the next few weeks too, as the urge to give Ten compliments increased. They rolled off his tongue like candy. “Thanks for the socks. I love the color, by the way, great socks.” “Hey, I like your shirt.” “I know I’ve said this before, but you have great style.” “How do you make the point-and-turn thing look so smooth? Can you show me how?” Yuta wanted to be next to him all the time. He stood as close to him as the dictates of personal space would allow, and Ten let him. Ten had started to look for him too, or at least, Yuta thought he had—what if he was imagining it?—and he was hearing Ten say his name more, feeling Ten move in his direction more. One time, when Yuta went to him at the end of practice so they could walk to the locker room together as they often did, Ten angled his body closer to Yuta’s and leaned into his side a little. Ten was talking to Mark. Yuta wasn’t thinking about anything except the pressure of Ten’s hip and elbow against him.

“Because you do too, right?” said Ten, swinging his face towards Yuta’s, closer than they’d ever been.

Yuta said, “Huh?”

“You do too. Like moving to new places,” said Ten, shifting away from Yuta so he could look him in the face without their noses brushing. “You came to Korea for school.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Yuta, “yeah. I guess we’re all a bunch of travel bums.”

“Yes,” said Ten, triumphantly pointing at Mark for some reason Yuta didn’t understand, “that’s exactly what I was saying,” and Mark shrugged, “No, you’re right, you’re right.”

_Ask him out_. The words burned in Yuta’s brain as he trailed Ten and Mark back to the locker room. Ten must know by now, right? He’d never outright said “ _Ten, I want to kiss you,_ ” but he’d never hidden the sentiment, either. Even Taeyong had mentioned it. (“Do you have a thing for Ten? Because you laugh at everything he says.”) And Ten had leaned into him. Ten had seen him coming across the room and gravitated to him without even pausing his sentence, like Yuta was his boyfriend and it was the most natural thing in the world.

Like Yuta was his boyfriend.

They waved goodbye at the bus stop and Yuta thought for a while about how the contact had felt. He wanted to feel it again. All the time. Preferably every day. There was only one way to make that happen. It was to ask him out. But if it went badly? On the chance that Yuta was reading too much into their quick closeness—and the chance was ample—then asking Ten out would at best make him feel bad for Yuta and, at worst, make Ten uncomfortable at TSS. It seemed to Yuta that making Ten uncomfortable at TSS only three weeks after he started was unriskable. Plus they’d probably never get back this closeness they’d so casually struck up between them. This warm, easy closeness.

He vacillated between extremes. The only option was to ask him out. The only option was to _not_ ask him out. It was silly not to ask him out. It was silly to do so. He’d never done this before; he’d always gone straight to the point with people he’d been attracted to in the past. What was wrong with him? What was different? Of course, nothing was wrong with him, and it was Ten who was different. While Yuta prevaricated about whether to make his feelings painfully known, he and Ten were becoming thick as thieves, at TSS and elsewhere. Ten had a way of turning everything into mischief. He’d tap the back of his hand against Yuta’s shoulder in the locker room and Yuta would look down to see him silently pouring water into Xuxi’s sneakers while Xuxi changed. Or Yuta would find him at the convenience store holding two bowls of instant ramen in his hand, and he’d confess that he was trying to come up with a way to get Mark to eat triple spicy without knowing. Ten only alerted him to the seeds of chaos he was planting because he knew that Yuta was fully disposed to aid and abet. And Yuta did. In fact, he did more than aid and abet, he reached full partner-in-crime status—setting the chaos into motion, sharing the masterminding, suggesting that each of them make a bowl of ramen but switch the sauces so the noodles in the mild tteokbokki ramen container would taste like the flaming kiss of death. “You’re incredible,” Ten had said. Yuta was having too much fun to think much of the word at the time, but it echoed all night when he got home.

By the time Yuta realized that he had never actually flirted with Ten—never asked him out, never told him what he thought about him, never coherently expressed a desire for any non-platonic interaction—they had been friends for months. They’d been out for drinks with the others and even had lunch a few times before TSS practice; it was too late for a “We should go out sometime.” They’d talked about makeup and fashion and working out and dancers’ bodies, it was too late for a “You look good today.” Anything more pointed would sound rude and inopportune, not to mention strange. He did take a few shots in the dark over the next few months—the occasional “It’ll only be fun if you’re there,” plus a “Don’t thank me, it makes me happy to make you happy,” and even, one night outside the bar when everyone was drunk and mad at each other for no reason any of them would remember the next day, “I don’t give a shit about anyone here but you.” Ten took all the comments in blithe, buoyant stride, even dealing back a few of his own, “You’re my new favorite person, I think,” and “Why are you late? I was bored without you.” Yuta felt the words like thorns and kept them in his pocket like shiny coins. It was so good, being like this with Ten. It was warmer now and easier than it had ever been. Maybe they should just stay this way. They’d known each other for four months at this point. Maybe if anything were going to happen, it would have happened already.

Sokcho was proof of that if nothing else. They’d stayed there overnight at the end of the summer with Johnny and Mark, who, on account of both being native English speakers, had quickly become friends after Johnny had been introduced to the TSS team in July. Saturday was supposed to be for hiking at the national park and Sunday for swimming at the beach. Instead, Ten and Mark had teamed up to whine and pout until Johnny and Yuta (mostly Johnny, who had planned the itinerary) agreed to go straight onto the beach at noon on Saturday. They’d tumbled into the ocean one by one, pushed or called for or pulled by the hand. Several games of chicken had followed. Yuta hadn’t been able to fall asleep that night. They’d rented a two-bedroom apartment, and, sheerly because of where they’d randomly dropped their bags that morning, Yuta had found himself in a queen bed with Ten, which, this deep into their decidedly platonic friendship, wouldn’t have given Yuta much pause at all, if he’d been able to blink away the memory of Ten sitting on his shoulders out in the deep water while Mark and Johnny tried to push him off. If he’d been able to drown out the thought of his cold skin, of holding his knees so he didn’t fall. The muscles in his thighs tensing and untensing. How he leaned into the back of Yuta’s head when his balance was threatened. Yuta could hear Ten’s shallow breathing across from him now. Ten was asleep already. Yuta squeezed his eyes shut and tried to make his heart rate slow.

And then, sweetly, softly, Ten turned over and laid his hand on Yuta’s stomach. Yuta froze. The room was silent and dark. Yuta tried to breathe slowly. It was no good. If Ten was awake, he’d feel that Yuta was too. _Was_ Ten awake? Yuta had thought for a moment that he was—his hand had landed so perfectly across Yuta’s sternum. But maybe Yuta had only hoped that he was awake. Ten wasn’t moving now, or making any sound.

He must have turned over in his sleep. It had been upwards of an hour since they’d gone to bed. And if he was awake, if he’d done it on purpose, he would have felt Yuta’s thumping heart and moved again by now.

And he didn’t. He just left his hand on Yuta as the minutes passed. Yuta lay very still. The last thing he wanted was to wake Ten up if he was asleep. And if Ten woke up, he’d lift his hand off of Yuta. Yuta tried to breathe motionlessly.

Ten minutes had passed before Ten finally did pull away. He rustled for a moment, and Yuta couldn’t see or feel whether he had turned over again, or just tucked his hand under his head. Then he was silent.

If it didn’t happen in Sokcho, it wasn’t going to happen. That was what Yuta thought on the way home the next day, and it was what he thought eight months later when he and Ten were on the subway to the party that neither of them wanted to go to. Of course, Yuta didn’t mind as long as Ten was there. They’d probably end up making excuses to leave early and wander off in search of a bar or another source of amusement anyway.

“We don’t have to bring anything, right?” said Ten, leaning into Yuta and away from the old man on his other side as the train bumped.

“What, like, soju?”

“I don’t know, soju, cheese balls, an offering of a human heart.”

“They’re lucky we’re bringing us,” said Yuta. They were both trying not to giggle too loudly. It was always an uphill battle for the two of them to stay quiet on the subway.

“I’m lucky _you’re_ bringing us. You,” said Ten. “Can you imagine me listening to Straightie Seokwoo and his girlfriend trying to prove they’re not homophobic for two hours?”

“I’m pretty sure my cousin is gay,” Yuta parroted in a low voice. “Like, if he came out to us I wouldn’t even be surprised, you know? I have a pretty good gaydar for a straight guy. Love is love, man.”

“Not that I knew you were gay,” Ten chimed, his voice going even lower and more moronic than Yuta’s, “like, you don’t seem gay just by talking to you, you just seem normal. I respect that.”

“Fuck,” Yuta hissed, unable to hold back laughter at how similar Ten sounded to their choreographer, and Ten shushed him while the old man next to them gave them a sideways glance. “Also,” said Yuta, “you wouldn’t have to talk to them for two hours. Marklee and Xux are going. And didn’t Taeyong say he might come?”

“Yeah, but like,” Ten said, pulling out his phone, “none of them are my go-tos. It’s easier if you’re there, I can escape any conversation at any time just by saying I have to look for you, and no one would question it.”

“Okay, true,” said Yuta, glancing at the time on Ten’s phone.

Ten had several unanswered messages. He didn’t bother reading them, just looked up and chirped, “Speaking of which, isn’t our friendversary happening soon?”

Yuta was stumped. “Friend verse siree?”

“Friend anniversary? When we first met and I gave you my purple socks?”

“Oh my god,” said Yuta, “what ever happened to those purple socks?”

“I think I lost one of them and the other one is just sitting in my drawer.”

“That’s tragic.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait, so, when did you join the Seventh Sense? Because whenever your first day of practice was, that was when we met.”

“I don’t know,” said Ten, pulling up the calendar on his phone. “It was the first week of May, I think.”

“You came on a Thursday,” said Yuta.

Ten looked at him. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Yuta had been afraid he’d missed a day for watering his plants, and he’d cried out to no one in particular, “What day is it?” and Ten had heard him from across the room and called back, “Thursday!”

Ten scrolled back several months through his calendar. “May 2019,” he said, and held out the phone for Yuta to see. “You think it was May 2nd or 9th?”

Yuta folded his arms and considered. “Well, I have no idea, but it’s May 2nd today.”

Ten’s face lit up. “Oh my god!”

“So let’s just pretend…”

“…it’s today!” Ten finished. “Happy Friendversary, friend,” said Yuta, sticking out his hand, and Ten grasped it.

“Happy Friendversary!” he said somberly.

They shook hands vigorously, going faster and faster until suddenly it had become a competition to see who would lose momentum first, and Yuta’s arm started to hurt but Ten was still the first to give in and let go, shaking out his wrist with a groan. Yuta crowed with satisfaction and Ten shushed him, and Yuta shushed him back because he was shushing loudly.

They carried on like that until they arrived at the address, and as they were climbing the steps of the apartment building, Yuta said, “So what are we gonna do to celebrate our friendversary?” and Ten gazed down the banister at him impishly and said, “I don’t know, something crazy?” There was something about the way he said it. For the first time in a long time, Yuta felt a nervous flutter in his stomach, and couldn’t think of any way to reply.

They went to find the party’s hosts, who greeted them innocently enough and helped them find drinks. They talked for a while about the new routine Seokwoo was working on, and then his girlfriend said something to the effect of gay people always being able to dance better than straight people and wondered how such a phenomenon had come about, and Yuta said, “Can’t argue with that. Hey, Haeyoung, do me a favor and point me toward the bathroom?” and Ten said, “Oh, I need to go too, we were on the subway for an hour.”

Their escape accomplished, they hid in the bathroom for twenty minutes, smelling the different mists and perfumes and lotions lined up on the shelf. Then they went outside to explore and found, after going through the open bedroom, a sizeable balcony where at least twenty or thirty people were moshing to a Coldplay song blasting over someone’s dollar-store speakers.

“Is this supposed to be ironic?” Ten shouted over the noise as Yuta pulled him into the throng.

“FOR SOME REASON I CAAAN’T EXPLAAAIN…” Yuta sang.

“I KNOW SAINT PETER WON’T CALL MY NAAME,” Ten sang back.

“Someone get Mark out here, stat!”

“What?”

“Mark!”

“Oh, yeah, Mark,” said Ten, and said something else, but Yuta couldn’t hear him. He cupped his hand behind his ear. Ten shrugged and held Yuta’s hand above their heads. Their drinks were sloshing as they jumped, and Yuta held Ten’s shoulder long enough to cheers and drain the cups before setting them down on a plastic chair and forgetting them.

The next song to come on was still Coldplay, and everyone was still dancing like they were at an EDM concert. “Who the hell’s playlist,” said Ten, and Yuta yelled, “Probably Mark’s honestly,” and Ten shouted, “Someone needs to put on Lizzo!” and Yuta said, “Who? Lizzo?”

“Lizzo!”

“Taeyong!”

“No, L—Taeyong?”

“What the hell,” said Taeyong, appearing from the bright rectangle of the bedroom door and putting his arms around their shoulders, “you guys smell like a Lush store.”

Ten, bless his lightweight heart, was already tipsy. “It’s our friendversary!”

“Friendversary?” said Taeyong, looking to Yuta, and then understanding dawned before Yuta had to explain. “Oh,” said Taeyong, smiling, “like, your friend anniversary?”

“Yeah! We met a year ago today,” said Yuta.

Taeyong, one of the dance team’s captains, had met Ten well before everyone else last year. He looked between them, his usually stern gaze mellowed by the party. “Congratulations,” he said. “A whole year.”

Ten said something Yuta didn’t quite catch, something that started with, “A whole year…”

“Really? I would have guessed otherwise,” said Taeyong and took a sip of his drink.

Yuta leaned toward them and said, “What? What did you say?” because what he’d heard was, “A whole year and we never made out once,” but he thought he must have heard wrong. Taeyong raised an eyebrow and Ten waved as if it wasn’t important. Then Taeyong said, “So how are you going to celebrate?”

“Maybe by doing something crazy,” said Ten.

“I’ll drink to that,” Taeyong said.

Ten and Yuta looked at each other and Ten said, “Drinks…”

“Let’s get some more,” Yuta nodded, and Taeyong said, “Have fun,” and Yuta and Ten trooped back inside with their empty cups. Yuta said they should make drinks for each other, and Ten said, “Okay, secret drinks,” and Yuta said, “Sure.” He didn’t put any alcohol in Ten’s cup, only orange soda and bitters. Ten was aghast at the taste, but drank it anyway. The drink Ten had made Yuta tasted faintly of whiskey or rum, he wasn’t sure which.

“Jesus, how much did you put in this?” Ten said, swirling the mixture in his cup as they made their way to the living room.

“I thought these were secret drinks,” said Yuta.

“You’re not even going to tell me how much alcohol I’m consuming?” Ten asked in a fake offended voice.

“I’ll tell you when you’re finished, deal?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you when you’re finished.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, Yuta!”

It was Xuxi’s voice. He waved them into the corner, where he, Mark, and a few other people Yuta didn’t recognize were sitting in a lopsided ring. Except for Xuxi and Mark, who were rising to say hello, they were all hyperfocused on a kid with a coin in his hand.

“What are you guys up to?”

“Cavorting, what are you doing?” said Yuta. Xuxi and Mark had made space for them to sit down and were beckoning. Ten sat on the edge of the couch next to Mark, and Yuta sat below him, putting an elbow on Ten’s knee.

“Flipping coins,” said Mark, pointing at the kid in the middle, who tossed the coin into the air and caught it as Mark spoke. He clapped it onto his other hand and held it out to the girl next to him, covering his eyes.

“Tails,” the girl pronounced.

The boy who had tossed the coin breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Thank god,” and a few people around the circle laughed while a few others complained in disappointment.

“Why?” Ten asked Mark and Xuxi.

“No reason,” said Xuxi. “It’s just funny.”

“It’s Doyoung’s turn,” said the boy, holding the coin out to the guy between himself and Yuta. Doyoung took it and said, “Anybody?”

“Heads, you do a handstand,” said a kid across the circle.

“Renjun, he’ll kill someone,” said the first girl.

“Probably myself,” said Doyoung.

“We have space,” said Renjun, and Mark added, “We’ll catch you.”

“I don’t trust anyone here to catch me,” Doyoung grumbled, but he held up the coin and tossed it into the air. It glimmered in the dim light before coming down, and he slapped it onto the back of his hand. He covered his eyes. “Say tails.”

Yuta peered closer at it. “It’s heads.”

Renjun hollered. Mark and one of the girls clapped. The circle was widening to make space for the upcoming acrobatics.

“We’ll catch you,” Xuxi insisted as Doyoung got to his feet, lamenting the possibility of his demise.

“I’m sure,” said Doyoung sarcastically.

“Okay, ten,” said the first boy, “nine, eight, seven, six…”

They all joined in. “Five, four, three, two, ONE!”

Doyoung groaned and threw his weight forward, legs quickly pinwheeling over his head. Xuxi stood and grabbed for his feet, but he was too late, and Doyoung came crashing down against the wall where someone had been sitting half a second before. He made a distressed noise, slumping upside down onto the floor. A drink had been knocked over. The whole room was laughing and applauding. “You said you’d catch me,” Doyoung moaned, and Xuxi, helping Renjun lower Doyoung back down, said, “I tried, I really tried, you went over too fast,” and Renjun said, “You never believed we were going to catch you,” and Doyoung sighed, “No, I never did.”

The coin was offered to Yuta after the circle was set back to rights, and he took it, spinning it between his fingers. “Perfect opportunity for something crazy,” Ten was saying.

“Maybe a few something-crazys,” Yuta said.

Mark pointed at Yuta and announced to the circle, “Guys, this is Yuta. He dances at the Seventh Sense.”

The circle “ahh”ed and nodded. “So does Ten,” said Yuta, jabbing a thumb Ten’s way, and the circle “ahh”ed and nodded again.

“So,” said Mark, “anyone want to call it?”

“Jungwoo has an idea,” said Renjun, tapping the boy next to him.

“I do?” said Jungwoo.

“Yeah, didn’t you just say something?”

“Oh yeah. Heads, you finish your drink, plus someone else’s,” said Jungwoo.

“Euaugh,” said Yuta, but he was relieved—he’d been a little rattled since mishearing Ten on the balcony, and taking the edge off didn’t sound like such a bad idea. And he could always drink Ten’s drink; there wasn’t any alcohol in it. Sure enough, Ten took a look at the coin he flipped and declared, “Heads! Chug!”

Yuta held up his cup. "Ten! Nine! Eight!" counted the circle. "Seven! Six! Five! Four! THREE! TWO! ONE, TWO, THREE..." It took Yuta a moment to realize that they had started counting back up when he had started drinking. Were they expecting him to finish before ten seconds? The murky cola mixture in his cup hadn’t hit his stomach too well, so he reached for Ten’s and drank down the medicine-tasting mocktail he’d concocted for him. Ten was right, it was terrible. He finished as the circle chorused, “NINE…TEN!” and raised his fists above his head triumphantly, not sure what exactly he’d accomplished but enjoying the cheering nonetheless. Then Ten was holding the coin up and Mark was saying, “Anyone want to call it?”

“Heads, you lick your own foot,” said a girl.

“No, Lucas already did that,” said Jungwoo.

“Heads, you kiss me,” said Yuta.

“Whooooaa!”

Yuta and Ten blinked at each other while the circle cooed and clapped appreciatively. Someone said, “Wait, you’re not dating?”

“No,” said Yuta, stomach doing wild knots suddenly, wondering what had happened in his brain in the half second before those words came out of his mouth. He looked down. “Here goes,” said Ten, and Yuta couldn’t watch the coin as it spun. Ten caught it and put his hand over his eyes. Yuta closed his own.

“Heads!” said Mark.

Cheering and wolf-whistles. Xuxi had his phone out and appeared to be recording. Yuta, giggling out of sheer terror now, clambered up onto the arm of the couch next to Ten. Ten was giggling too. He had on the same jittery smile he’d worn when Yuta had first seen him in the locker room.

“Something crazy,” said Ten with a shrug.

“TEN!”

“Ten,” said Yuta, a beat too late.

“NINE!”

“Nine…”

“EIGHT!”

On “SEVEN!” Ten kissed him. There was no preamble, no head tilt or meaningful glance. Yuta was so shocked that he almost fell off the couch. He flung one arm around Ten and the other out behind him, and Ten grabbed both his shoulders while a hand or two laughingly shoved at his lower back until he got his balance. When he did, Ten’s arms were wrapped around his neck and he was holding Ten’s body to him, and they were together and kissing, kissing like it was the only thing worth doing, kissing like it made sense. It made sense. He made sense. His lips, his mouth, his arms, every last inch of him. Ten.

Coming out of the kiss was like struggling to the surface of deep water. When Yuta finally broke it, he could hear sounds that he hadn’t before, and could feel the sharp cold of the air around him. Most of the people playing the game were cackling while they applauded, and several others who had been watching with raised eyebrows turned back around as Yuta met their eyes. Ten, who was panting slightly in his arms, put a balled-up fist against his chest and pushed himself off him. Yuta grabbed the back of the couch and sat up.

“Will I get my bones broken if I put this on my story?” Xuxi called over the comments rapidly flying across the circle.

Yuta felt like he was on the moon and couldn’t figure out how to get his balance in the half-gravity. Unstably, he looked across the gulf of space at Ten, who was saying to Xuxi, “What? We couldn’t beat you up even if we teamed up,” causing Mark to dissolve into another fit of laughter. Yuta wanted to kiss Ten again. Or just hold him again. He was too many centimeters away to lean into casually. The coin flashed bright in the air, and Yuta realized they had already moved on to Mark’s turn. It landed and Xuxi called it tails. Yuta didn’t even know what Mark had been dared to do if it came up heads.

The coin passed to Xuxi. Ten’s laughter was brittle. He was tapping his empty cup with his fingernails. Was he on edge now? No. Yuta was just projecting. He shifted a few more inches away to give Ten space, just in case. Maybe Yuta _was_ projecting. Maybe Ten wasn’t even fazed. Oh, no, no, his smile was failing for a short second, and then it came back, but Yuta had seen it drop.

“I’m gonna run to the bathroom,” he said, standing up, legs still moonwalky and jellyish. “Anyone want anything…?”

He pointed halfway around the circle, landing on Ten, who shook his head with a smile. Then Yuta wandered through the crowd until he found the kitchen sink. He turned on the faucet, filled his cup with water, and drank half of it before getting out his phone.

“ _Hey we’re okay right? lol_ ” he messaged Ten with a drunk-face emoji at the end.

Ten’s reply read, “ _FRANKLY?????? NO!!!!_ ”

Yuta almost dropped his phone. His fingers punched at the keys. “ _Fuck sorry” “Sorry sorry” “It was too much_ ”

He was halfway through a fourth message—” _I’m sorry i really fuckign misjudged th”_ —when Ten texted back, “ _SORRY WAIT!! I DID NOT MEAN FOR THAT MESSAGE TO SOUND SO FORCEFUL_ ”

Yuta’s fingers stopped typing, and as he tried to get his thoughts together, Ten texted again. “ _JUST????_ ”

A second later: “ _come meet me on the landing outside the apartment or something”_

The “ _or something_ ” combined with the sudden switch to lowercase and the lack of punctuation in the last message wholly terrified Yuta, and once he had texted back “ _Okay im coming !!_ ” he ran water into his cup again, gulped down half of it, and made for the front of the apartment. Ten was sitting on the edge of the landing, looking down the stairs. He looked up when Yuta opened the door.

“I’m sorry,” said Yuta, closing the door behind him.

“What?” said Ten. He had stood up. “What for?”

Yuta made a noise that would have been the start of a word, if he had any idea what word to say.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ten said.

Yuta blinked several times. “Then… Are you…okay...?”

“No, yeah, but like, why did you, are you good? Are _you_ okay?” said Ten, voice rising. “Are you drunk or what?”

“Drunk? No!” said Yuta.

“You chugged both of the…”

“I didn’t put any alcohol in yours, Ten,” said Yuta. “I drank it _because_ I didn’t. I’ve only had two drinks, the beer earlier and the thing you made me.”

“I didn’t put anything in the thing I made you either,” said Ten, stiff with surprise.

“Oh,” said Yuta.

“So, okay,” said Ten, taking the cup from him and peering into it, “what is this, are you trying to catch up?”

Yuta’s head was spinning. “It’s nothing. It’s water. Ten, are you upset—?”

“I’m not upset!” Ten said. “I’m just wondering why you kissed me like that. Like, it just seemed very out of…”

“Why _I_ …? I w—” Yuta couldn’t seem to put words together. “I thought—you were down to…?”

“No, yeah, I mean of course, but why did you say for me to kiss you, in the first place, I mean?”

“I don’t…know?”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean I wanted you to kiss me.”

The pileup of words between them halted. Ten stared at him blankly, not showing enough understanding to even look surprised.

Yuta had already pitched himself overboard; he might as well scream as the waves rushed up to meet him. “I’ve always wanted you to,” he said. “To kiss me.” The reckless abandon of it thrilled. “I’ve always wanted you.”

Ten sucked in a short breath as Yuta finished his sentence. He didn’t exhale. The air seemed thin. Ten’s eyes were wide now, and there was something vivid painted across his face. Yuta swayed slightly on his feet.

They moved for each other almost at the same time. They collided hard, a little too hard, hard enough to lose their balance and for Ten to make a sound against Yuta’s lips. Their momentum carried them into the wall. Yuta threaded his fingers through Ten’s hair as they rolled, and stopped, and Ten held him against the wall and kissed him. Yuta put his hands on Ten’s hips and walked him back until Ten was lowering himself onto the rising staircase. Yuta bent one knee on a step beside him, kissing him unrestrainedly, and Ten kissed him back even harder.

Somehow, twenty minutes later, they were sitting side by side on the step, so they were aligned in perfect symmetry when Mark opened the door saying, “…if it’s not out here, that’s proof you stol—Fuh-huh-huuuck,” and Yuta and Ten looked to the door just as it closed and the sounds of the party were swallowed back up.

Yuta turned back to Ten, who giggled, and Yuta giggled, and Ten gave an “Aw” or an “Oh” and kissed him again. A few minutes later, the door opened once more and Xuxi howled, “THEY’RE STILL…” before the door shut again. Ten groaned.

“Unbelievable,” said Yuta.

“Yeah.” Ten was still holding Yuta’s face in his hands. Yuta started to speak just as Ten said, in an almost agonized whisper, “Oh, god, Yuta, I like you so much.”

Warmth flooded Yuta’s body so fast, it almost felt like a shock. “Ten, _I_ like _you_ , I always liked you. I tried to make it obvious.”

“You did what now?”

There was a loud _thud_ against the door that set it shuddering, and an eruption of laughter on the inside. Ten stood up and leapt onto the landing, saying, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

Yuta got up. “Where?”

“Anywhere but here!”

They tripped down the flights of stairs. Yuta threw his weight against the glass door at the bottom and they spilled out onto the street, linking up the second they were both through the doorway.

“We can go to the stream,” said Yuta.

“Or the mountain,” said Ten.

“Or my house,” said Yuta.

“Really?” said Ten.

“What? Sure. You’ve been to my house like four times.”

“I know, but,” Ten said breathlessly.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Yuta said.

“Why didn’t _you_ ever tell _me?_ ”

“I did! A million times! Just—badly!”

“Well me too!”

“Come over,” Yuta said.

“Yes. Yeah. What if we got a taxi?”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t talk in the cab. The driver was humming along to trot songs playing from the front speakers. Yuta felt his phone buzz, and he pulled it out to find an Instagram notification from Ten. He glanced at him. Ten raised his eyebrows pointedly. The link brought him to a video Xuxi had posted, and he cringed and looked up at Ten again, who puckered his lips and made a deafeningly loud smooching noise.

“ _PLEASE_ ” Yuta messaged back.

“ _please what :-)_ ” Ten said.

“ _Don’t get us kicked out of this cab for being gay_ ”

“ _but i am gay :-(_ “

“ _Really? Nice_ ”

As soon as the cab dropped them off and peeled away, someone’s hand reached for someone else’s and someone pulled somebody to them and they connected again. They ran inside, and Yuta wanted to throw Ten onto the couch and kiss him more, but instead of doing that he said, “Name one time you tried to tell me you liked me, because I was trying to remember a time in the car and I think you’re kidding yourself—”

“One time? 2019,” said Ten.

His smile as he backed Yuta into the wall—thrilled, amused, exasperated, incredulous and relieved, all in flickering frames across his face—was beyond beautiful. Yuta accepted an impatient kiss before saying, “Ten, you can’t just say an entire year,” and Ten said furiously, “I literally told you at the beginning that I wanted to be alone with you more.”

“What? When?”

“When we were at the stationery store in Mokdong before practice!”

Yuta remembered. He had almost dissolved into a cloud of butterfly wings. He argued, “You _said_ we should hang out more with just the two of us, not that you wanted to be alone with me,” and Ten spluttered, “It’s the same thing!”

The sentence was punctuated by another kiss, and another. “And I,” said Ten, “I, when we were sharing a bed in Sokcho, I tried to see if you were awake—”

“Sokcho,” said Yuta, “god damn it,” and he pulled Ten's mouth to his. Ten caught his breath. “—and you barely breathed, I could feel your heart beating, I thought you didn’t want it so I just pretended to be asleep and—”

“I did want it, though, I did,” said Yuta.

“I _knew_ you were awake.”

“I thought you were asleep. And I was so surprised, and, and nervous, I didn’t know what to do.”

“Yuta,” groaned Ten, shaking him by the shoulders, “you’re so fucking stupid.”

“At least I’m stupid enough to try to get you to kiss me in the middle of a dumb game at—”

They tumbled onto the couch, and in the process of doing so they came together again. Yuta had more questions, but they could wait.

The morning, in contrast to the long moon-dream of the night before, was illuminating, and things started to become clearer in its light. Yuta, for example, knew immediately after waking up that he hadn’t ever stopped liking Ten, even though he’d convinced himself at some point of the myth that he was content to just be friends with him. And in the kitchen, watching Yuta’s attempted poached eggs devolve into scrambled ones, Ten said with a trace of shyness, “Actually, I just realized I did kind of know.”

“Know what?”

“Know you liked me.”

Yuta dropped the spatula into the pan. Ten said sheepishly, “I just didn’t, like, want to bring it up and find out I was wrong and I’d been kidding myself the whole time.”

“Ten!” said Yuta, not knowing whether he wanted to kiss him or scowl at him or bury his face in his hands.

“I mean,” said Ten, lifting his own hands off the edge of the counter and twisting them, “didn’t you ever ask yourself if we were already dating and you didn’t know it?”

“Did you?”

Ten looked as shy as Yuta felt in the quiet of the kitchen. “Yeah.”

“When?”

“A few times.” He shrugged, a little smile growing. “When we went to Everland and you won the goldfish and gave it to me.”

“That fucking goldfish that died in like 30 hours?”

“Rest his beautiful soul. And you wouldn’t let me thank you,” said Ten, “because you said it made you happy to make me happy. And I was like, is this my boyfriend?” He laughed softly.

“I could be,” said Yuta.

Ten’s laughter dwindled to a smile.

“Can I be?” said Yuta. “Your boyfriend?”

Ten’s lips thinned for a second, like he was holding down an even bigger grin, and he put his hands on Yuta’s shoulders. The kiss he gave him was just a peck compared to all the others, a little bird’s chirp of a kiss. Then he whispered, “We could just say you already were.”

Yuta breathed out. “Like we’re taking a secret relationship public?”

“Yeah, exactly.” Another little kiss. “Yes. Please be my boyfriend, is what I’m saying. I’d be ecstatic.”

A third kiss, like the tiny twinkle of a star, bled into daylight and then there was the smell of smoke, and they both said at the same time, “Eggs!”

After the eggs were determined to be unsalvageable and they sat down on the floor with toast, Yuta said, “What if we really did just tell everyone we’ve been dating this whole time?”

Ten shook his head, dipping toast in his coffee. “Then we’d start to believe it too.”

“I think I’ll remember a year of pining for my best friend,” said Yuta. “Plus, at least we could get back at Marklee and Xuxi for the Instagram thing.”

Ten didn’t seem to hear him finish. He was staring at Yuta with the sweetest, prettiest look of surprise. “I’m your best friend?”

“Oh,” Yuta said and put his hand on the back of his neck, “well, I know you have Lisa and Johnny, but I just...thought of you as...”

Ten shuffled closer to Yuta and said, “I am. You are my best friend,” and Yuta grabbed him to pull him into a hug. Then Yuta said, “And my boyfriend,” and Ten said, “Well, yeah, that’s been established.”

Yuta said as Ten sat back, “Yeah, I was just checking that I wasn’t dreaming or, like, in a coma that whole time.”

Ten replied, “If you are, I’m right there with you.”

The plan to make everyone believe that Yuta and Ten had been in a secret relationship backfired spectacularly, in not one but three separate ways.

The first way it backfired was that everyone believed it so readily, Yuta and Ten didn’t have to do any work to convince anyone at all. Multiple people at TSS even said, “Secret? What secret? I figured you were dating like last year.” Without the challenge of getting people to believe them, the whole thing wasn’t exciting anymore. The second way the plan backfired was when they got bored and tried to tell people the truth a week later, and no one believed them. “What do you mean, you just got together for real at Seokwoo’s party? Bullshit, you’ve been obsessed with each other since Ten got here.” “What, and you made up a secret relationship just to mess with us? Yeah right.” “You guys are so fucking weird.” The whole thing was so ridiculous that for three days, Ten and Yuta couldn’t look at each other at practice without breaking down into uncontrollable giggling. Everyone else at TSS took this as confirmation of the fact that they were lying now, and they truly had been in a relationship for a year, and this was just another prank they’d cooked up in between hiding people’s clothes in the locker room and seeing how many times they could get Taeyong to review the same eight steps before he realized they were only pretending not to be able to remember them.

The third way the fake secret relationship backfired was when, two years later, Yuta said to Ten, “Is it me or have the past three years gone fast?” and Ten said, “It feels like it’s only been a year or something,” and Yuta said, “Is this your longest relationship? Three years?” and Ten said, “What? Three years what?”

“What what?” Yuta said. “Three years of being in a relationship.”

“Yuta?” said Ten, frowning while laughing. There were daisies bending behind him in the grass.

“Ten?”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

“Joking about what?”

“That we’ve been dating for three years?” said Ten.

Yuta’s brow creased. “What are you talking about? It’s our third anniversary.”

“Yuta!” Ten said. “Last year was our _first_ anniversary! Before that was our friendversary!”

“Friendversary.”

“The day we kissed at that party and found out we were into each other?”

Yuta’s eyes widened, and he froze. Ten whooped a horrified laugh and jumped off the park bench. Yuta put his hand over his mouth.

“You forgot!” said Ten.

“I…”

“Yuta!”

“I FORGOT?”

Ten turned away, howling with laughter, bending over and leaning his elbows onto his knees. Yuta stood up, waving his arms in a call-off motion. “Ten…Ten…”

“You believed your own lies,” Ten gasped, standing up, the necklace Yuta had given him this morning swinging from his neck.

“I swear to god,” said Yuta as Ten grabbed both sides of his head, “I only forgot for a second. It’s because everybody was saying ‘happy three years’ at practice. I didn’t even…! It got in my head for a second!”

“You’re so lucky my type is dumb bitches.”

“Holy shit, yeah I am,” said Yuta before Ten pressed a laughing kiss to his mouth.

They didn’t stop laughing about it all day. It came up again at dinner, after Yuta said, “Happy second anniversary, babe,” and Ten said, “And happy third Friendversary,” and Yuta shrugged, “Or happy third anniversary, if you elect to buy into the TSS secret relationship urban legend and forget the truth completely,” and they were cracking up again.

“Well,” said Ten, running the little gold charm along the chain of his necklace, “every myth has a kernel of truth to it, and all that.”

Yuta watched the arrow charm pressed into Ten’s thumb run back and forth. “Yeah,” he said, “for example, you thought we might be dating before we were actually dating.”

“Well, I knew we liked each other before we were actually dating, so, yeah, in my head we were dating.”

Yuta laughed. They’d talked about this again and again, and it was still entertaining every time they went back to it. “Ten, that’s not how dating works. You have to agree you’re dating to be dating.”

Ten dropped his necklace and leaned forward on his elbows. “All I’m saying is, there’s a fine line between fact and fiction.”

He really was beautiful. A while ago, Yuta had thought he couldn’t get any more beautiful, but he did all the time.

“Like what you said yesterday,” Ten said.

Yuta knew what he meant. He’d told Ten yesterday that he felt as if he’d known him forever, not just since before they’d met, but maybe since before they’d been alive, somehow.

“It’s just love,” said Yuta. “The fine line. That’s all it is.”

Ten smiled and blinked prettily at him. His necklace shimmered in the candlelight. “Just?” he said.

Yuta conceded, “I guess you can’t really call it a fine line if it’s more of a broad stroke.”

Ten nodded thoughtfully, his chin in his hand. Then he said, “If you’re not kissing me within sixty seconds, I’m going to throw a fit in the middle of this fancy restaurant.”

Yuta said, “Fair,” and they paid and managed to steal a minute under the overhang before skipping off to find a Baskin Robbins that Ten thought he’d seen two or three blocks away. The street was shiny with rain, and sharing an umbrella was an easy excuse to hold each other. “Are you sure it’s this way?” Yuta asked as they fell into step, but of course it didn’t really matter if the Baskin Robbins was this way, or if there was one at all, because anytime their feet were going in the same direction, it was the right one.

**Author's Note:**

> ~the end~ !!!!! thank you so much for reading!! i hope it brought a little extra color your day :D thank you SOOOO much as well to the lovely organizers of yuten week!!! this would never have come about without them and their hard work! i was really in need of a break from my other wips and this was the perfect little oasis to arrive at in the middle of them. i have our dear yuten week mods to thank for this opportunity to dive into a new project, refresh my little fic brain and have a ton of fun!
> 
> as always, feel free to voice any thoughts or concerns in the comments, i would love to hear from you! happy yuten week, and don't forget!!! yuta and ten want you to treat yourself nicely, so show yourself as much kindness & forgiveness as you show to the people you love!!! it will make them very happy


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